Web 2.0 Glossary

Web 2.0 has brought with it a whole host of buzzwords, it's really just a buzzword summing up the latest generation of Internet technology. Generation that encompasses the tools and technologies which are described below.

These are terms describing the methodology and technology used to create Web 2.0 pages. AJAX means Asynchronous Java and XML and is used to make web pages more responsive while avoiding the need to load the page each time new information is needed. XML, which stands for Extensible Markup Language, is used to make the website more interactive.

The visual representation of a person in a virtual world or virtual chat room.

A blog, which is short for web log, is series of articles usually written in a slightly informal tone. While many blogs are online personal journals. A blog network is a series of blogs hosted by the same website or company, while the blogosphere refers to all blogs across the Internet regardless of whether they are an individual blog or part of a blog network.

This refers to those crazy letters and numbers you have to decipher and type in when filling out a form on the web. It is a mechanism used to check whether or not you are human and is used to prevent spam.

The Internet is sometimes referred to as the "Cloud". Cloud Computing refers to the recent trend of using the internet as an application platform, such as using an online version of a word processor as opposed to using a word processor that is installed on your computer's hard drive. It also refers to using the Internet as a service, like storing all of your pictures online at Flickr rather than keeping them on your hard drive.

This refers to the process of taking Web 2.0 tools and ideas and introducing them to the workplace, such as creating a business wiki in order to hold online meetings or using an internal blog as opposed to sending out email memos.

The process of including location information, such as providing the location a photo was taken or using the GPS of a cell phone to 'geotag' where you were when making an update to your blog or a social networking site.

The process of creating potentially viral content with hopes of obtaining a large number of incoming links. For example, writing a article of a current event in hopes of attracting a lot of attention. A negative aspect of link-baiting is intentionally saying something unpopular in hopes of creating a stir or creating a hypter-provocative title to an article.

Many search engines give weight to the number of incoming links to a web page in order to determine the quality of a page. Link farms are webpages filled with links with hopes of raising the search engine ranking of destination pages. Most modern search engines like Google tend to recognize link farms and ignore the links produced.

This refers to the trend of websites recognizing mobile devices and utilizing their special features, such as Facebook knowing that you have signed on with your smartphone and using the GPS to tell where you are located.

An early term that has lost ground to 'cloud computing', Office 2.0 refers to the trend of taking office applications and turning them into web applications, such as online versions of a word processor or spreadsheet.

A web page that is highly customizable, often featuring a news reader and the ability to add widgets, and is designed to become your web browser's "home" page. Excellent examples of personalized start pages are iGoogle and MyYahoo.

The distribution of audio and video "shows" across the Internet, such as a video blog or an Internet radio show. Like blogs, they can range in subject matter from personal to business and serious to entertaining.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a system of transporting articles across the internet. An RSS feed (sometimes simply called a 'web feed') contains either full or summarized articles without all the fluff contained on the website. These feeds can be read by other websites or by RSS readers.

The program used to read an RSS feed. RSS readers allow you to aggregate multiple web feeds and read them from a singular place on the web. There are both online and offline RSS readers.

This refers to the idea of a web capable of taking the subject matter of web pages without relying on keyword phrases within the content.